Imagine arriving late to class, ears burning from the cold, and stepping over puddles and bags until you finally find a seat. As the professor lectures away, a student several rows down raises his hand. The professor, unaware, continues the lecture. After some time, the student eventually puts it down.

For most McGill students, this scenario isn’t hard to imagine. Professors might not always be fully aware of the hands that go up at the top or the far sides of a lecture hall, and it’s not their fault. They’re only human after all.

What if there was a way to detect if a student raised their hand in a large crowd, or to recognize if students were confused during a lecture? These possibilities are being explored at the McGill Shared Reality lab.

“A prototype system that we developed years back was used to automatically detect if a student raised his or her hand up for a question,” Dr. Jeremy Cooperstock, Director of the Shared Reality Lab, said. “Since it was in a large class setting, the system would then inform the instructor by raising a flag on the screen about who has their hand up, and what part of the room they’re in.”

Experiments at the Shared Reality Lab involve the use of virtualized reality techniques and advanced networking protocols to give users a strong sense of co-presence—the feeling of being together in a shared physical environment. This is accomplished using a number of screens, cameras, projectors, and microphones, along with a high-fidelity vibrosensory system.

“This high fidelity and low latency type of communication gives people the ability to feel like they are engaged in coordinated synchronous activity with those far away, while in the comfort of McGill,” Cooperstock explained.

The lab was one of the first research groups in the world to support a distributed music performance. Jazz students from Montreal and Stanford performed together at the same time using the technology developed by the Shared Reality Lab. They were able to see and hear each other in the same capacity as if they were physically in the same space.

The lab also looks at how to adapt users to a different kind of environment by rendering physical scenarios, such as the sensation of walking on different ground surfaces, such as snow, gravel, or sand.

“And they can experience that even though they are physically in a laboratory environment, walking on floor tiles,” Cooperstock explained.

The third dimension of the lab involves looking at sensory substitutions for those unable to experience a certain aspect of the everyday world around them. By working with the blind community, the Shared Reality Lab looks for ways to give these people the visual experience of the world around them. This is accomplished by providing the information usually available to vision through audio, explains Cooperstock. The lab has also given demonstrations on new technologies for the Android and iPhone, which give users a constant display, through audio, of what points of interest are around them while walking outside.

Along with developing sensory substitutions, the lab has created different applications to help Music and Medical students at McGill. For musical training, the lab developed a simulator known as “Open Orchestra” which has received significant recognition.

“The simulator was [developed] to give classical and jazz musicians the experience of rehearsing with the rest of their band or the orchestra around them,”  Cooperstock explained. “It wasn’t a live performance scenario. Rather, it was a rich multimodal experience of what it feels like, looks like, and sounds like to be sitting in, for example, the second violinist seat in a 30 seat orchestra and playing along with the different musicians, while seeing and hearing the conductor at the same time.”

Similarly, a training system was used to train McGill medical students in response scenarios. This project was funded by the Canarie’s Network Enabled Platforms (NEP) program, and was completed in 2010. It involved using medical mannequins to mimic different physiological functions, such as blood flow to the heart, and teaching students through scenarios where they had to experience and address real situations, such as a patient in a car accident.

Through this new approach to human-computer interactions, the Shared Reality Lab offers a glimpse into the future of virtualized reality, which could change the way we interact with people around the world. One day, attending the opera could involve listening to different opera singers in different time zones, standing on different stages in a worldwide opera house located in cyberspace.

The Dent Lab in the Stewart Biology building is humming with activity. Run by Dr. Joseph Dent, an associate professor and researcher at McGill University, the lab focuses on the molecular genetics of the behaviour in C. elegans, a nematode roundworm. 

Specifically, the lab’s research focuses on understanding the structure and function of neurotransmitter receptors, the role they play in behaviour, and how we can manipulate them to treat diseases, or better understand how nervous systems work. Essentially, neurotransmitter receptors are membrane receptors that receive electrical signals, facilitating the transmission of information from the brain to the body, and vice versa.

“Our lab has basically two components,” explains Dent. “One is a relatively applied component, and the other a more basic research component.”

The applied component of the lab concerns the relationship between neurotransmitter receptors—important targets for antiparasitic drugs—and pesticides. Dent and his team are currently looking into how existing drugs kill parasites, specifically nematode roundworm parasites, and how nematode parasites develop mutations that allow them to become resistant to these drugs. They hope, through this research, to learn how we can use antiparasitic drugs to better prevent the disease from reoccurring, as well as to make the drugs more effective against resistance developed by parasites.

Nematode roundworm parasites are of significant importance due to the disease caused by the nematode Onchocerca volvulus. River blindness, caused by O. volvulus, is endemic to Sub-Saharan Africa, where 18 million people are at risk of losing their sight. The disease is currently being treated with the drug Ivermectin, which is given in yearly doses by the World Health Organization (WHO) to help people who are already affected and reduce the rate of transmission.

This second area of research comprises the lab’s more basic research aspect. The team has investigated the role neurotransmitters play in behaviour, how the nervous system uses them to modulate behaviour in interesting ways, and the fundamental features of the neurotransmitters themselves. Through this work, they are able to look at the mechanisms behind Ivermectin resistance and how nematodes develop resistance to the drug.

The team works with the roundworm C. elegans in its experiments. While not parasitic, this organism is a much more efficient model to use during experimentation. Since C. elegans is highly similar to other organisms, the team can translate what they learn to various other systems.

“It turns out nematodes have a lot of receptors that humans do not have. These are a good target for anti-parasitic drugs. You want a drug that targets the parasite and not humans,” says Dent.

The Dent Lab works with C. elegans first, and then collaborates with the Institute of Parasitology in order to transfer the work performed on C. elegans to see if it has a similar effect on the parasite.

Looking to the future, Dent says, “We’d love to come up with a new, effective, safe drug that would allow us to have an impact on these diseases.”

“We would also like to better understand the design of the neurotransmitters in all organisms, [in order to] use the information to better focus or target our search for drugs to specific subsets of channels,” explains Dent. “If we understand it, can we design better drugs and better drug targets that are less likely to develop resistance? If we understand how resistance occurs before it occurs, can we use the drugs in better ways?”

Behind the scenes of the lab’s operations, funding plays an important role. According to Dent, the Lab does not get as much support as he would like, since the Canadian health agencies are focused on research concerned more directly with Canadian health. However, the lab receives more support from the agricultural and pharmaceutical industry, which is interested in these drugs because they can also be used to treat livestock. Ivermectin, for instance, is an active ingredient in drugs used by farmers to treat livestock with deworming agents.

“The economics are such that the companies make their money selling these drugs to farmers to treat livestock, so that they can produce cheap meat. We benefit from that, in the sense that we receive industry money to support this research.”

Most important, however, is the idea that spurred this research. When asked, Dent explains it was “just lucky.” While studying the eating behaviour of C. elegans as a post doctoral fellow, Dent discovered a mutant gene that affected their behaviour, and made it less efficient. He located and cloned the gene, only to discover it was a neurotransmitter receptor and the target of the drug Ivermectin—from there, his research took off.

“It often happens that you study one thing and make a completely unexpected observation. What is exciting about research is that, you never know where it will go next—the most exciting research is the research you didn’t anticipate on doing.”

Just before I was born, my parents consulted an astrologist to find out if I would be born healthy. Using the stars, the astrologist made predictions about my mental and physical development. 

Before my kids are born, I might go to a company such as 23andMe. 23andMe uses DNA sequencing to recognize if babies will be genetically susceptible to certain diseases as they grow older.

The technology used by 23andMe was made possible due to the Human Genome Project, which successfully sequenced the complete human genome. Published in 2003, the human genome was to be the harbinger of the age of personalized medicine. However, the costs of whole genome sequencing were prohibitively expensive, and time consuming.

Costs have dropped dramatically in the past few years, increasing accessibility of sequencing the genome to a large number of people. The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), which tracks the costs of sequencing a genome, estimates current prices to be around $7000, down from around $50,000 when the human genome was published, due to improvements in technology.

The time to sequence these genomes has been reduced as well. In October 2012, a research group from Children’s Mercy Hospital, in Kansas City, Missouri, managed to sequence the whole genome of a baby in 50 hours.

Currently, there are a number of companies that offer to test single genes or a panel of genes related to a certain disease. While useful, these tests, which range between $500-1,000, might only be prescribed in case the family has a history of that disease.

Whole genome sequencing offers the ability to analyze the entire genome, thereby providing clues to what diseases may arise, irrespective of heredity. Additionally, genome sequences can help provide evidence of extremely rare hereditary diseases, which the targeted genetic testing provided by companies may not reveal.

Finally, knowing the genome of the newborn child or fetus could help provide appropriate genetic counselling to parents early on, and help physicians design targeted therapies. The decrease in costs, as well as the benefits whole genome sequencing provide, has dramatically increased demand for this procedure from the public. Soon, it may be the norm to obtain a whole genome sequence of a baby as soon as it is born, and use this data to determine future medical intervention.

Whole genome sequencing, however, is not without its drawbacks. The New York Times, in a piece on the procedure, states that out of 100 patients with any genetic disorder that was sequenced, only 30 patients had a misprinted gene detected by whole genome sequencing. Of these, only three per cent of the patients receive better management, and only one per cent gets treatment.

As of now, whole genome sequencing to identify diseases is still like looking for a needle in a haystack. We do not know all the mutations in a gene that could give rise to a disease. Most diseases arise from defects in multiple genes, further complicating diagnosis. Even if genes suggesting increased risk of disease were to be identified, we lack the ability to treat many of these diseases with current medication.

Improvements in genome sequencing and reduction in costs will someday help doctors better tailor medicine towards the individual patient. With developments in DNA testing, parents will no longer have to consult an astrologist to predict their kids’ physical and mental development. Instead, a DNA sequence will provide insight into their susceptibility to disease. Scientifically, this is the way forward.

Touchscreens have revolutionized the way we interact with digital devices. The most important attribute they have brought to the user experience is the reduction in the learning curve of operating a device. A simple tap on the screen can trigger commands that would have otherwise been complicated with a mouse and keyboard.

Keyboards posed a problem for some computer users, due to the fact that most populations are not 100 per cent literate. With the advent of the touchscreen, people need only touch an icon on a screen to perform the desired task, rather than type in a command. The increasing ease in operation has immense implications for increasing the universal use of technology around the world.

The idea of the touchscreen has been around for decades. The first working prototype, a resistive touchscreen, was developed by American inventor Sam Hurst in 1982. What we see in smartphones, tablets, and other devices today, however, are capacitive touchscreens. There is a marked difference in the fluidity of the touch experience between the two formats.

The resistive touchscreen is composed of transparent, electrically resistive layers, which have a thin gap between them. When the screen is pressed at a particular point, the layers come in contact, and they behave as voltage dividers. Using this mechanism, the position of the touch on the screen can be tracked and fed into the control unit.

The problems with this type of display are that it requires a harder touch to register a signal, and the mechanism wears out over time—both of which reduce the functionality of the touchscreen. In contrast, the capacitive touchscreen works on the principle that the human body is a great conductor; the screen has a glass panel coated with a transparent conductor such as indium tin oxide. When the screen is touched with the finger, the electrostatic field (a field of charged particles) of the screen is disrupted, which enables the desired function.

This process results in a highly effective phone, as the screen can be activated with merely a gentle touch. The only flaw associated with this format, is that it cannot be operated using gloves or any another material that cannot conduct (which becomes a problem during Montreal’s cold winters).

The potential applications of touchscreens are impressive. At the keynote of the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) under the theme “Mobilizing Possibilities,” Samsung introduced an innovative range of flexible displays called “Youm.” Using Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLEDs) on a plastic sheet, they created high-resolution displays that bend. This technology allows many novel phone features, such as the expansion of the smartphone’s screen, enabling it to curve around the edges of the phone. This curved area could be used for looking at notifications, such as text messages, while the device is lying flat on a table. The Youm platform is one of many innovations that will define the next generation of touch-based devices.